Macs are on the rise in businesses and educational institutions, and while IT managers might not like it, users are increasingly asking for more Mac support from their workplaces. Supporting Macs means coming up with ways to manage and configure them to run your programs and comply with your IT department’s best practices, and doing that quickly and effectively means finding ways to install pre-configured operating system images and approved applications on them.

Software like Disk Utility or Mike Bombich’s Carbon Copy Cloner, which can copy the contents from one Mac’s hard drive to another’s, are fine for imaging individual Macs, but these tools typically don’t scale very well, and administrators will still need to perform some post-install configuration tasks manually—things like renaming computers and binding them to directories. The tools Apple builds into OS X Server are more useful for larger deployments, but they don’t make it all the way there. The System Image Utility, part of the OS X Server Admin Tools package, can capture your images, and the NetBoot service will let you apply that image to multiple Macs without the need for third-party programs or bootable media. These tools can deploy fully configured images with all of your desired programs and customizations, but if you need to make changes for individual computers or departments, you’re left to either make these changes manually or create and maintain multiple images, adding to your workload.

Enter DeployStudio, a free third-party tool that combines the convenience of NetBoot with flexible and customizable tools for automating application installs and post-configuration tasks. If you’ve got a large number of Macs to image and not a lot of time to image them, it may just be the program you’ve been waiting for.

Setting up DeployStudio

DeployStudio can actually be installed and run from any external drive large enough to hold the software, a basic OS X install, and your images and installers; but the best and most convenient DeployStudio setup will use NetBoot to simplify the imaging process. This article will focus mostly on integrating DeployStudio with NetBoot, but configuring workflows and creating and restoring images will work the same way regardless of how your back end is configured.

Here's what you'll need to host DeployStudio:

A Mac running Lion Server and connected to your network with an Ethernet cable.

The NetBoot service. To enable and configure it, you'll need the OS X Server Admin Tools, which are a separate download from Apple. Apple's own documentation on setting up the NetBoot service is pretty extensive if you need help.

A networked file share using the AFP or NFS protocol. This does not necessarily need to be hosted on the same server providing the NetBoot service, though it can be.

First, you’ll need to download and install the DeployStudio package on your server. The current stable version is 1.0rc131b, but the project is updated fairly regularly with bug fixes, new features, and support for new OS X versions. Nightly builds are also available, if you prefer to live on the bleeding edge.

Once installed, launch the DeployStudio Assistant, which will walk you through configuring your server and your DeployStudio NetBoot sets. At first launch, accept the prompt to start the DeployStudio server service, and then select 'Set up a DeployStudio Server' from the list of tasks.

The DeployStudio Assistant will walk you through configuring your server and your boot media.

The first thing you'll be asked to do is specify your server's name, and a username and password that can be used to log in to it. The name can be either the server's IP address or DNS name, if one is available, and the credentials can be any account that can log in to the server. I usually create a local, non-administrator service account called "DSAdmin" as a best practice, but this isn't strictly necessary.

Your server address can be either an IP address or a DNS name, if you have one.

Next, you'll choose whether your DeployStudio server will be a master or a replica—your first server will be a master, but additional replica servers can be used for redundancy and load balancing—and whether to use a local folder or network share point for your images and other files. You'll need to enter the path to your network share point, as well as credentials that have read/write access to the share. DeployStudio will create several folders in this location that it will use for storage of files, images, and logs—remember this for later.

From here, everything else is optional. You can configure email notifications, whether to use SSL encryption, which port the server will use (the default is 60080, or 60443 for SSL), permissions to the various DeployStudio apps, and a few others. Configure everything as desired, and once you're done you'll be sent back to the main DeployStudio Assistant window.

Now, elect to create a DeployStudio NetBoot set. You just need to create a name and unique identifier for your NetBoot set and input your DeployStudio server's information (the name, the port, and access credentials) to get what you need, but you can also change the desktop wallpaper, enable or disable wireless support, disable DeployStudio's unobtrusive banner ads (with no penalty, though you will be prompted to donate), and you'll be done. Since you're creating the NetBoot set on the actual NetBoot server, the assistant will automatically offer to put the image in the right place and set it as the default, but you can also run the assistant on any OS X client and manually copy the NetBoot image to the server if you wish.

That's it! You've configured a basic DeployStudio server, and are ready to begin using the program. DeployStudio NetBoot sets include not just the things DeployStudio needs to work, but also a handful of other tools like the Disk Utility and System Information tool. You can even add your own utilities and make your NetBoot set into a useful diagnostic and file recovery tool.

59 Reader Comments

So, lets assume that users are asking for a Mac. Now, what does a Mac do that a PC does not, at a fraction of a cost? (and fraction of a fraction of total cost that includes lifespan and support).So, now lets ask why would a business pay extra for something that doesnt do the job any easier or any faster?

Depending on the job, think of it as a morale issue. Letting the users decide what tools they want to do to get their job done.

Morale or keeping up with the neighbor / shiny tech reason? Job is about getting work done. 99% of applications are identical (even behave identically) on both Mac and PC, so why would bosses spend more money on Macs that cost several factors more to maintain and support, not to mention rebuying all the software? I am guessing that none of the armchair commanders here actually run a business that has more than 50 people.

Macs are much cheaper than PCs in the long run. Sure you can get a junk PC for $400, but its still junk and hell to manage. So in the end, businesses aren't paying more, they are paying less. That includes support and employee happiness (which can drastically affect productivity and profits).

Nobody in a professional enterprise buys a $400 machine. Period. This is wrong.

apple4ever wrote:

And yet they really don't have to do much to allow a Mac. So its not redundant, not wasteful, and in the end much cheaper than a PC.

You're missing the point. One doesn't have to do much to allow anything on access to the network. It's all the back end work. Are you even familiar with the term V&V and how much that costs to certify and support another platform? Do you know what an ISO 9001 compliance means? WE DON'T care how you do your job as long as you can justify the costs of doing business. Apple doesn't support enterprise environments. It's not cost effective to support them when there is nothing wrong with your current setup.

apple4ever wrote:

I'm in IT, and I rail against other IT departments too because they stubborn and blind.

Then you must be on the Helpdesk of a small business because you have no idea how very large operations work nor what is involved. Don't worry though, I was naive once too. Sorry to be tough, but your name implies you might be a bit biased.

apple4ever wrote:

Well, then you aren't looking at the right numbers. The TCO of a Mac is much cheaper, especially when factoring in support and employee happiness.

This is the kicker. Do you believe the most powerful enterprises/corporations in the world mostly don't go with Apple products because they haven't run the numbers? Are you that naive? Do you somehow know more than whole teams of experts who's soul purpose in life is to run numbers on this? Man, you can make a killing in life if so. I'm not sure which numbers you are pointing to but the business world like to know how save apparently millions.

Macs are much cheaper than PCs in the long run. Sure you can get a junk PC for $400, but its still junk and hell to manage. So in the end, businesses aren't paying more, they are paying less. That includes support and employee happiness (which can drastically affect productivity and profits).

Nobody in a professional enterprise buys a $400 machine. Period. This is wrong.

Might be a little careful with that "definitive" statement. It may be anecdotal, but I work at a company with 130,000+ employees. Standard desktops the company was deploying were costing $425. So I guess where I work is a "period"

It's comical how many of the comments here are from the perspective of "this is how it works in the small slice of the industry that I've seen, so therefore it must work that way everywhere." Come on folks, have some sense of perspective. What it's like where you are is not true for everybody, and different solutions can be appropriate in different industries, or in different companies within one industry. Sheesh, why is this hard to understand?

Where I work (an scientific/aerospace research institute employing hundreds of people), Macs are a majority of the machines on people's desks, not just because of their general good usability but because they're Unix boxes and can happily run the same codes as we deploy on the Linux clusters on the back end. Sure, some folks have Linux on their desktops or laptops, but most of our technical staff seem to prefer Macs. Business apps run on a mix of Windows and Mac. Macs integrate perfectly well with all our back end, including Kerberized NFS for access to a couple PB of shared storage, Exchange for email and calendering, MS Active Directory for unified account management across Mac+Win+Lin, and lots of other random infrastructure.

But you know what? That's just us. Our organization is not your organization. This solution works for us, but I'm not about to tell you that it's appropriate for everyone out there. I have a maxed-out Mac Pro on my desk with 96 GB of RAM and two 30-inch monitors, which is appropriate for what I do, but I'm not about to say that everyone out there needs one, nor am I going to complain that you find yourself most productive on a 1 lb Windows Netbook with 9 inch screen that I couldn't begin to do any of my technical work on. There is no one size fits all solution! So why does everyone always persist in turning any post about Macs in business into a rehash of the same damn tired issues?

If you stick around Ars very long, you'll learn to skip very rapidly over the OSwars. They do crop up pretty often, and sometimes in places you'd never expect, but most OSwar posts are easily spotted within the first line or two. And once you have your OSwar filter in place, there is a lot of other interesting stuff being said.

It's comical how many of the comments here are from the perspective of "this is how it works in the small slice of the industry that I've seen, so therefore it must work that way everywhere." Come on folks, have some sense of perspective. What it's like where you are is not true for everybody, and different solutions can be appropriate in different industries, or in different companies within one industry. Sheesh, why is this hard to understand?

Where I work (an scientific/aerospace research institute employing hundreds of people), Macs are a majority of the machines on people's desks, not just because of their general good usability but because they're Unix boxes and can happily run the same codes as we deploy on the Linux clusters on the back end. Sure, some folks have Linux on their desktops or laptops, but most of our technical staff seem to prefer Macs. Business apps run on a mix of Windows and Mac. Macs integrate perfectly well with all our back end, including Kerberized NFS for access to a couple PB of shared storage, Exchange for email and calendering, MS Active Directory for unified account management across Mac+Win+Lin, and lots of other random infrastructure.

But you know what? That's just us. Our organization is not your organization. This solution works for us, but I'm not about to tell you that it's appropriate for everyone out there. I have a maxed-out Mac Pro on my desk with 96 GB of RAM and two 30-inch monitors, which is appropriate for what I do, but I'm not about to say that everyone out there needs one, nor am I going to complain that you find yourself most productive on a 1 lb Windows Netbook with 9 inch screen that I couldn't begin to do any of my technical work on. There is no one size fits all solution! So why does everyone always persist in turning any post about Macs in business into a rehash of the same damn tired issues?

Man, I hate OS flamewars.

I'm in agreement with adminfoo, on the post quality.

I am a little envious, though. To have the staffing and administrative support to make a setup like that work would be nice.

So, lets assume that users are asking for a Mac. Now, what does a Mac do that a PC does not, at a fraction of a cost? (and fraction of a fraction of total cost that includes lifespan and support).So, now lets ask why would a business pay extra for something that doesnt do the job any easier or any faster?

Macs are much cheaper than PCs in the long run. Sure you can get a junk PC for $400, but its still junk and hell to manage. So in the end, businesses aren't paying more, they are paying less. That includes support and employee happiness (which can drastically affect productivity and profits).-snip-

It's comical how many of the comments here are from the perspective of "this is how it works in the small slice of the industry that I've seen, so therefore it must work that way everywhere." Come on folks, have some sense of perspective. What it's like where you are is not true for everybody, and different solutions can be appropriate in different industries, or in different companies within one industry. Sheesh, why is this hard to understand?

Where I work (an scientific/aerospace research institute employing hundreds of people), Macs are a majority of the machines on people's desks, not just because of their general good usability but because they're Unix boxes and can happily run the same codes as we deploy on the Linux clusters on the back end. Sure, some folks have Linux on their desktops or laptops, but most of our technical staff seem to prefer Macs. Business apps run on a mix of Windows and Mac. Macs integrate perfectly well with all our back end, including Kerberized NFS for access to a couple PB of shared storage, Exchange for email and calendering, MS Active Directory for unified account management across Mac+Win+Lin, and lots of other random infrastructure.

But you know what? That's just us. Our organization is not your organization. This solution works for us, but I'm not about to tell you that it's appropriate for everyone out there. I have a maxed-out Mac Pro on my desk with 96 GB of RAM and two 30-inch monitors, which is appropriate for what I do, but I'm not about to say that everyone out there needs one, nor am I going to complain that you find yourself most productive on a 1 lb Windows Netbook with 9 inch screen that I couldn't begin to do any of my technical work on. There is no one size fits all solution! So why does everyone always persist in turning any post about Macs in business into a rehash of the same damn tired issues?

Man, I hate OS flamewars.

I'll keep the flames off the OS stuff but I"m genuinely curious as to your rig. Where I work we can model entire powerplants, including reactors, in models that are housed around server clusters running an proprietary suite of software. Who would use a fraction of that power on a single personal machine? Given the dollars that something like that would cost, why not do the heavy lifting on a shared resource? How do you share instances? If your rig requires 96GB of ram then something is wrong with this picture unless everyone is running machines of such ilk. It doesn't make sense although your post is articulated well.

We have users who run programs who's license alone for an individual runs in excess of $80,000 on a single machine with 4Gb of RAM (granted I don't procure software but I'm aware of that one program, but the budget overall is in the millions). Thats for a single program. Throw in entire suites of CAD software and the rest and it still seems like overkill. Who runs simulations that way?

In looking at your post and prior posts (which the name rung a bell by the way) I understand that you have a background that is technical as well. I also infer, and I could be wrong, that your point of view and paradigm come from a more close knit smallish cluster of power users who might be able to cobble a mixed infrastructure together. Where I was coming from is an environment with several thousand users all of whom are crunching sub-models on modest machines. I understand that environments are different, but when it comes to enterprise/government sized entities, such leeway in hardware/firmware/software is prohibitive.

Macs are much cheaper than PCs in the long run. Sure you can get a junk PC for $400, but its still junk and hell to manage. So in the end, businesses aren't paying more, they are paying less. That includes support and employee happiness (which can drastically affect productivity and profits).

Nobody in a professional enterprise buys a $400 machine. Period. This is wrong.

Might be a little careful with that "definitive" statement. It may be anecdotal, but I work at a company with 130,000+ employees. Standard desktops the company was deploying were costing $425. So I guess where I work is a "period"

I'll concede to that point. I'll admit that a $425 dollar machine would not fit in the general framework or the environment I work in but would be otherwise sufficient in others. Good call and thanks!

If you stick around Ars very long, you'll learn to skip very rapidly over the OSwars.

Been here a year longer than you, whippersnapper. ;-)

adminfoo wrote:

Anyway, thanks for a nice post.

My pleasure - and thanks.

cdclndc wrote:

I'll keep the flames off the OS stuff but I"m genuinely curious as to your rig. Where I work we can model entire powerplants, including reactors, in models that are housed around server clusters running an proprietary suite of software. Who would use a fraction of that power on a single personal machine? Given the dollars that something like that would cost, why not do the heavy lifting on a shared resource? How do you share instances? If your rig requires 96GB of ram then something is wrong with this picture unless everyone is running machines of such ilk. It doesn't make sense although your post is articulated well.

These days that much RAM can be had for under $1500. Yeah, we've got shared machines with that much too (quite a few of 'em), but it's not absurd for a high end desktop these days. My colleague the next office over just bought a couple GPU cards that cost more than that, each.

One of my more demanding workloads is parallelized optical simulations of diffractive propagation through telescope optics, which can take 5-10 GB per thread. But it's embarassingly parallelizable, so more RAM lets me take advantage of the 16 threads on the hardware. Plenty of people here have more typical workloads and just run programs on standard desktops, while others run multi-month computations on giant clusters. It's pretty diverse.

cdclndc wrote:

In looking at your post and prior posts (which the name rung a bell by the way) I understand that you have a background that is technical as well. I also infer, and I could be wrong, that your point of view and paradigm come from a more close knit smallish cluster of power users who might be able to cobble a mixed infrastructure together. Where I was coming from is an environment with several thousand users all of whom are crunching sub-models on modest machines. I understand that environments are different, but when it comes to enterprise/government sized entities, such leeway in hardware/firmware/software is prohibitive.

Totally agreed - hence my original point! Yeah, the setup we're using here doesn't come cheap, and would be ridiculously inappropriate for most places. But for what we're doing (running the Hubble Space Telescope and developing its successor, among other things) it's justified -- and the cost of the hardware (and >$10k/user software licenses for some tools, that too) ends up being pretty small compared to the salary costs of employing highly-trained individuals. The real cost is the IT support staff, not the hardware -- and that is, yeah, way more pricey than one would like (...I say, while paying for it out of the overhead charges on my research grants. ;-)

So, lets assume that users are asking for a Mac. Now, what does a Mac do that a PC does not, at a fraction of a cost? (and fraction of a fraction of total cost that includes lifespan and support).So, now lets ask why would a business pay extra for something that doesnt do the job any easier or any faster?

We build StorNext SAN environments that connect fiber directly to the desktop workstation which delivers extremely high-performance throughput for collaborative video editing and motion graphics work. The client software on Windows systems is $3,500 on Linux it's $2,000 and on the Mac it's included for free in OSX (XSan). Added up across a 30-user workgroup, we can build and deploy Maya/CreativeSuite SAN environments for tens of thousands of dollars less with Mac workstations than with Windows PCs (and that's not even considering other TCO benefits that usually swing toward Macs)

Macs integrate perfectly well with all our back end, including Kerberized NFS for access to a couple PB of shared storage, Exchange for email and calendering, MS Active Directory for unified account management across Mac+Win+Lin, and lots of other random infrastructure.

OK, and completely off topic but reading this the other day I kinda mentally flagged this statement. The phrase 'Kerberized' reminded me of an alpha stage game that I've since subscribed/purchased into. Given your references to space projects it reminded me of the 'Kerbal Space Program' program. Has anyone tried it?

I've been challenging my son in building rockets in it and all the while explaining the physics that are relevant to the challenge. It's really cool and if some day you might be bored, whether at work or at home, this makes for a really cool, funny, challenging diversion. Any game where you have to bring up tables relating to orbital insertion, maneuvers, or just center of gravity vs. center of pressure calcs is way to cool. Maybe think of visiting or supporting.

I was under the impression that Mac aficionados have always had a pretty low regard (to put it politely) for "IT" and "IT folks" in general. Why the sudden interest in "IT"? Maybe you feel that the tide is turning and now it's your turn to be" King of the Hill"? Well, you're welcome to it. Once you start being pulled several directions at once by the demands of users, network admins, management, security policymakers, etc, etc, etc, let's see how you like it. Maybe then you'll realize why we do the things we do.

In any case, the granularity and scalability of systems management options available for the Windows platform is stil light years ahead of those for Macs. Eat that.

I'm at the other end of the scale. I'm a Unix admin (Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX, and RHEL, specifically). I look down on you Windows IT guys, too. You just can win, can you?

"There is also another trend that has been increasing... and that would be not having to preconfigured every new machine.. Seriously, my last two companies have not flashed a base image in 5 years.. It comes with the PC and is a service from the manufacturer (you provide the image/images).. Saves a LOT of money..

Love my Mac, but it still has no place in business..

Where have you been dude? Apple has been doing this forever too. Businesses can have their Macs com pre-loaded too. Most companies don't use this route though - at least in my 20+ years of consulting.

A lot of the commenters seem to think that the highest priority of their employer is to provide an environment in which IT can effectively manage employee computers.

I think that for many organizations, there's little, no, or perhaps negative value in centralized management. I can get my work done just as easily on my personal computer as my work computer, and a lot of the software I use on my work computer I bought on my own dime.

Missed this article when it got posted. Quite a bit of dumb in the comments. Macs have a place, and write-ups like this are a pretty good step to getting people to stop fearing macs. That said, quite a few people use macs at work 'because they look nice, and "my title starts w/ C"'.

Having to manage 500+ macs over multiple sites, Im glad Deploy Studio is around. Solutions like Casper are a bit nicer, but when you work for a company that wants all of the purdy, but doesn't want to pony up for the tools required, or you have a handful of macs, this works pretty damn well.

"users are increasingly asking for more Mac support from their workplaces"

And IT is increasingly telling those people to go **** themselves

There is also another trend that has been increasing... and that would be not having to preconfigured every new machine.. Seriously, my last two companies have not flashed a base image in 5 years.. It comes with the PC and is a service from the manufacturer (you provide the image/images).. Saves a LOT of money..

Love my Mac, but it still has no place in business..

FYI, Apple can accommodate pre-imaging for enterprise deployment as well. Just call your local Apple Accounts Manager and they'll get you sorted. They can also do custom extended warranties (e.g. four and five years), and pre-enrolled warranties (systems arrive already register with Apple and to whom). Apple systems have every business being installed in business environments. Perhaps myopic IT personnel should find themselves on the unemployment line. Never understood “tech people” complaining about needing to learn new tech. Every other “profession” needs to updated skill sets why should IT be any different.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.